From Jazzebel's piece on jazz on WorldSpace radio: 'There's another plus point for me: very little of either jazz rock or free jazz and other discordant avant-garde music that has blighted this otherwise creative and compelling art form..."

To the author of Jazz around the clock and its good:

Hey there,

Speaking on behalf of another 1,000 students, professionals and semi-professionals who are taking their degree in contemporary/jazz performance with me and definitely from my own side, and musicians in general, it's exactly ignorant, precocious and pompous wise guys like you who seem to have taken some kind of vow to make life difficult for us musicians.

Exactly what are your credentials to be passing a comment like the one above... knowing very well you are living in a country where 99.99 per cent of the people are not even equipped to understand or have the kind of background to really react to what you are saying and will just take your word for it?

Discordant???? Exactly how much do you know about harmony? While I'm aware that there are those to whom genres like rock still and always will mean Bon Jovi and Megadeth, that isn't where it ends. If you are such a great fan of Miles Davis, then LISTEN to some of his later electric stuff... he was one of the first jazz masters who had the guts to experiment with just about everything and that DEFINITELY includes rock as well... refer to albums like In a Silent Way or The Man with the Horn.

Herbie Hancock?? Famous for his refusal to be categorised as a 'jazz' musician (read in between lines if you are capable), one of his recent albums consisted of very personal interpretations of pop and rock hits... one of which even includes a song from Nirvana (heck I'm not crazy about those guys but if Mr Herbie Hancock thinks they write stuff worth interpreting then I'll give them due respect... OBSERVE AND LEARN!!)... some of his albums even derive influences from techno, disco... and rock too.

And I'm not even getting into some of the guitar players who have brought about revolutions in the world of jazz... John Scofield, Scott Henderson, Al di Meola, Mike Stern... the list goes on. If that's not jazz for some wannabe 'jazzpatron' to whom a term like mixolydian #11 probably means as much as martian algebra, well... and read my lips IT DONT MATTER!
BLOODY MATTER!!!!

I listen to every form of jazz... and God knows there are plenty. I listen to dixieland, be-bop, cool jazz, latin jazz, bossanova, you name it and I do it... I'm spending 14 hrs a day at the piano trying to find out even 1 per cent of the depth that lies beyond this four letter word... so when i see a guy like you whose only experience in this form of art is probably attending five jazz concerts in two years and putting on a jazz CD among fellow precocious snobs trying to act more enlightened at a cocktail party... IT CHEESES ME OFF.

Good to hear about the guys you listen to man...THEY ARE MASTERS... they are shamans for doing what they have, but jazz has moved on and is not only about walking basslines and a 4/4 swing pattern. God knows that is HIP too... but there is more so LISTEN to more MUSIC man!!! Expressing a personal opinion in taste is one thing but trying to mould the minds of people through media by trying to tell people what is 'real' jazz and not is'nt. 

Get urself a warm glass of milk... i'ts way past your bedtime.

T L Mazumdar


A blight on jazz

Dear Mr Mazumdar, 

Whatever you might guess or surmise about my credentials for writing about jazz, I have a right to my opinions about jazz just as you have a right to your opinions about my writing. If you disagree with me, just say so: I don't think you need to be abusive.

As for what I think about free jazz and jazz rock, nothing you say can force me to like jazz rock. Whether or not Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock have performed jazz rock or not is totally irrelevant: I have a right to say that I like what they have done in mainstream jazz and dislike what they have done in jazz rock. Jazz rock is too noisy for my taste and free jazz is too discordant for my taste and they are a blight on jazz, as far as I am concerned.

Isn't it obvious that whatever a writer writes is his personal and subjective judgment? What does it matter that great jazz musicians by my own reckoning have made music which I consider noisy? If I like John Coltrane's Blue Train and Giant Steps and consider him great does it oblige me to like his work in free jazz such as his album Live in Seattle? I am not mouding public taste or anything like that; I am just voicing my opinions along with trying to give the reader some guidance about what kinds of jazz you find in any particular recording (or radio station in this case).

If you come out with a recording of your work and would care to have it reviewed by me, I shall certainly do so fairly: I'll talk about what kind of jazz it is, how original it is, how much solo improvisation there is, what the sound of it is like, and then comment on whether or not I find the rock influences (if there are any) not to my taste (e.g., loud drumming, electronic note-bending, etc). And I promise that whatever personal remarks you have made about me will be irrelevant to my judgment, just as suppositions about whether or not I drink milk at night should have had no relevance to your comment on my writing. But it will be equally irrelevant to me that you're spending 14 hours a day on your jazz education and training.
 
The bottom line is this: I don't say jazz rock or free jazz is not jazz; I just don't like the sound of it and I have a right to say so. And while there are lots of great jazz musicians who have gone into these genres (or even into straight rock or some other genre that isn't considered jazz), I'm not obliged to say I like that part of their work

Jazzebel

The Picasso of music